Hi there, I own a first floor apartment that is next to one of my building's two boiler room exhaust fans. The fans are located in the basement, next to my balcony, but a floor down (the vents are in a below ground concrete "room" with no roof, I guess kind of like a concrete well. Awesome, right?) Typically, the fans would turn on and off about once an hour for a few minutes. No big deal.

But lately, the fans are running all the time, for days on end, causing the balcony divider (plastic, with small gaps, and doesn't go all the way to the "ceiling") to vibrate-- which sends all the noise and vibrations into our apartment.

The only thing separating us from the noise is this sad little divider, so I was thinking that building a custom divider over the current one (the building allows this, as long as it is wood covered, or painted white or brown). We plan to build one anyway because the building-supplied divider is ugly, so while we're at it, is there a way to incorporate noise and vibration reduction, too? I'm not expecting it to go away entirely, but to help take the edge off a bit.

Hello-- and thanks for your reply! The current barrier is about 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide. Maybe 1" think of hard plastic. It does not go all the way to the ceiling, so there's empty space to fill that I suspect will make a difference. The ceiling is about 10 feet tall. The divider is essentially right next to the source, which is a concrete pit with vents inside, approx. 8-10 feet below the balcony floor. I am unable to measure exactly how deep it goes and what the exact location of the vents are, since it is blocked off and we are not permitted down there.